


healing

by sulfuric



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Freeform, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 20:25:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14940785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulfuric/pseuds/sulfuric
Summary: maybe, newt considers, he has to stop liking him, just for a little bit, so that he can stop loving him.





	healing

**Author's Note:**

> me @ me: who hurt u
> 
> (now with extended, more hopeful ending! wow!)

**i.**

it starts out great. they’re fast friends, and almost faster almost more than friends. he’s not sure how something this great happened to him, but he holds onto it with all he has. it’s too bad newt’s always had shaky hands.

it sort of falls apart within a year or so of them meeting. nothing _happens,_ but, well, _something_ happened.

 

**ii.**

he breathes. minho tells him about all the people he sleeps with. sometimes he gets the full rundown, a start to finish adventure with the privilege of coaching minho through his approach. sometimes they’re an afterthought, mentioned in casual conversation weeks later.

newt doesn’t know which one hurts more.

he reminds himself to breathe, and that he has no more claim over minho than these strangers whose dicks he sucked in the back of cars. he literally has no worldly right to be upset over this. he takes each name like a punch to the throat, but he’s being a good friend, so he doesn’t cough. he knows they don’t mean anything, in theory. it’s just the culture of it all.

it makes him feel prudish and childish and close-minded and everything that just screams _inexperienced_ but he truly just doesn’t fucking get it. maybe it’s all the crippling mental illness, and maybe it’s just who he is as a person, but he knows that that’s not something he could ever be a part of. he also knows that that is probably a big contributor to the fact that he’s never gotten laid (and, if we’re being completely honest, never will) but he’s way beyond that, at this point.

 

**iii.**

he doesn’t feel like he can tell minho any of that, or any of _anything_ , now.

sometimes, when they’re hanging out, minho will offhandedly mention how thomas confides in him. he’ll put his head in his hands, or give this big sigh, or sometimes _both_ , and say how it’s a lot. and the rational part of newt knows that thomas’ oversharing - not malicious or particularly unwelcome, he and minho _are_ friends, but still, unprompted and sometimes, well, a _lot_ \- is not the same as newt telling minho about his shitbrain’s latest antics specifically after minho expressly tells him that he can _talk about that kind of stuff with him_ (in that specific tone, you know the one) but still. those kind of reactions stick.

and he knows (thinks he knows) that there’s no spite when minho lets off steam about these aforementioned thomas sadness infodump sessions, but there’s something about it that paralyzes him and prevents him from ever even considering opening up to minho, about any of that. about any of that, and, as it seems to develop over the following months, anything.

maybe they were in a place, once, where that could have been possible. a place where minho could hold newt late into the night and breathe the anxiety out of him. a place where they could exist, together. but that place doesn’t exist anymore. it’s quite possible that it never did. so, he pushes those feelings down and locks them away and breathes, and says that he’s been doing alright.

 

**iv.**

he spends a lot of time daydreaming. it’s definitely a not minho thing, too, but it’s not a coincidence that a lot of his alternate realities center around him. he dreams up worlds where they scream and fight and break up and it might be one of the most masochistic things newt’s ever done (which is, for the record, saying a lot) but good fucking god at least it’s something. it’s closure and it’s release and it’s something other than what it is. it’s awful and it’s gross and it’s terribly self-indulgent/self-destructive, but it’s his fucking shitbrain and as long as all that stays contained within it, he’s not hurting anyone but himself.

 

**v.**

he’s not sure when it all changed. he can’t pinpoint an exact moment or event in his memory where he can confidently say, “yes, this is where it happened.” ‘cause what do you do if you were never together in the first place? what do you do when nothing ever really _started_ , but there’s definitely something that’s ended?

 

**vi.**

he thinks a lot about those faraway perfect days, the ones toward the start where he was sure of everything. okay, maybe not everything, but he sure as hell was sure of minho. sure of their almost-love. sure of the way minho’s face lit up at the sight of newt walking into a room, sure of the way he gravitated toward him, always finding a spot next to him. sure of their hands brushing together not-accidentally at every opportunity. back then, newt almost felt invincible. he definitely still had his problems, but it was never as bad.

it was a good couple of months. newt’s sure that he’s idealizing it in hindsight, just like he does with everything, but it truly was _good_. there’s no amount of nostalgia, no matter how chronic, that could change that.

it was good.

it was constant texting, not even trying to hide the fact that they were flirting. it was lazy cuddling and fingers loosely intertwined. it was listening to music together and creating worlds around the songs, fabricating elaborate universes just for the fun of it, just to hear the other go off on an impassioned rant about a team of spies who really happened to like lorde or a pre-breakup road trip for a pair of high school sweethearts about to be torn apart by distance.

it’s interesting, looking back, seeing how quickly minho was to decide _that_ detail.

it was all these things and a million more, and it was never acted upon. newt supposes (he _supposes_ everything these days) that’s equally his fault as much as it is minho’s, but he knows (he doesn’t _know_ a lot, but this he does) that minho has always been the one to go out and get what he wants. he initiates the nameless tinder hookups, his lowkey fucked up friends with benefits deal he has going on with thomas, the one he thinks newt doesn't know about. he’s the one that decided to move to the city, completely on his own, and then followed through, because that’s what he wanted to do.

newt supposes that that has to say something about _him_.

 

**vii.**

it drives him fucking crazy. they’re still friends - good friends - obviously, that never changed, even with minho leaving. a lot of the time, newt wonders if the entire thing was just in his head. he knows that a lot of it is just ‘cause the shitbrain. it’s a constant back and forth, idealizing and catastrophizing their relationship at the smallest change in wind.

it’s exhausting.

and you might suggest, humbly, that newt just get his shit together for a hot second or two and _talk_ to minho about it, about everything, but there are several things you must consider with that:

  1. newt doesn’t really _do “_ talking about it”, at least not when it comes to his own issues; he prefers to suffer in silence.
  2. nothing actually happened between them. _nothing actually happened between them_. newt repeats that to himself like a mantra. there was never any official declaration of, like, _“hey, we should be dating for real now”_. they never dated. they never even _kissed_.
  3. what the fuck is he supposed to say? “hey, minho, did you ever really love me or was that an elaborate daydream i accidentally inserted alongside my real memories in order to escape how much reality makes me want to walk into oncoming traffic?”
  4. yeah, no.



he thanks god that he’s not _actually_ in a relationship with minho, or with anyone, for that matter, because this is clearly not a sustainable practice.

 

**viii.**

and then just when he thinks he’s gotten over it - just when he’s breathed through every fuckboy’s instagram page, just when he’s learned to laugh through the seemingly serious complaints of “not being used to people not liking him”, just when he thinks he’s learned to accept their relationship for what it is and what it isn’t, just when he thinks he’s finally found some fucking _peace_ \- minho will hit him with some utter fucking bullshit. we’re talking what kind of _dog_ they’re gonna get (like, _gonna_ , non speculative future tense) or the corniest winks or a cool, casual, platonic (?) “you know i’d date the hell out of you, but-” that just sends newt reeling back to whatever halfway hellhole he’s dug himself out of so, so many times.

it’s like whiplash, because one sentence minho’s on the phone telling newt he needs to “put himself out there, seriously, when was the last time you even _had_ a crush on a dude” and then the next he’s sighing about watching movies cuddled up with newt on his macbook once he comes to visit him in the city.

newt wants to tell him: “the last time i had - _have_ \- a crush on a dude was - _is_ \- you, idiot.” also, he wants to tell minho that he fucking hates mac os, but he already knows that.

instead, he breathes, and he thinks about every faceless person minho has dated or fucked in the past three years, because while everything else is  _supposed_ or inferred or breaking newt's neck or all three,  _that_ is real. that is concrete. that is minho no longer having feelings for him, and that is something that newt is learning to accept.

 

**ix.**

he breathes and breathes and breathes. he listens to minho’s stories about the city and lets himself hate him, just a little bit. he clips the wings off the butterflies that have festered in his stomach, growing sour with contempt for everyone and everything. he finds pettiness where he once found sass, immaturity instead of youthful charm.

maybe, newt considers, he has to stop liking him, just for a little bit, so that he can stop loving him. (he worries, in the back of his mind, if he’ll stop liking minho altogether. if they’ve just become too different, grown too far apart, when they were supposed to be growing together.)

 

**x.**

and there’s no neat ending to this story, because that’s not how it works. because newt will probably never get the satisfaction of _knowing_ , will never get the closure, and he fucking supposes that he’s just gonna have to learn how to pretend that that’s okay.

so he breathes, and he listens to the stories and keeps his own tongue on a short, tight leash. and he breathes, and he waits for it to stop hurting. he waits to feel better, and, eventually, he stops waiting for answers.

and that, he supposes, is what healing is supposed to look like.

 

**xi.**

months later - there is no  _later_ , not really, not yet, but later - he goes home and sits on the rocks jutting out over the coastline. he writes. afterwards, he finds his way down to the shoreline and walks until the water reaches his knees. he sets the pages gently into the open palm of the ocean and watches them get dragged out into the open water, words disintegrating as they sink into oblivion. he tilts his head back, closes his eyes, and breathes.

and then, there is peace.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://00250.tumblr.com)


End file.
